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Apple & Quill: Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle

Hamilton College's Burke Library presents Apple & Quill: Creative Arts at Burke, an innovative series focusing on creative writing, music, and the visual arts. With support from Hamilton's Digital Humanities Initiative (DHi) and Audiovisual Services, the series is recorded and archived for future teaching and research opportunities. The spring 2014 lineup showcased Hamilton's book arts collection, and included a series of book arts themed events.

Apple & Quill, in collaboration with Hamilton's Music Department and Digital Humanities (DHi), present a performance and workshop by Anna Roberts-Gevalt and Elizabeth LaPrelle. This video features Anna and Elizabeth discussing the history of the ballads that they love, and using theater to breathe life into the stories found in the music. The performance concludes with highlights from a special "crankie" making workshop.

ANNA ROBERTS-GEVALT and ELIZABETH LAPRELLE are based in Southwest Virginia. They met, coming at traditional Appalachian music from different directions. Anna was in a touring old-time band. Elizabeth was singing ballads in far-away states. They came together to create a different kind of show: one that used theater and stories to show people what they love about old tunes and ballads. They also knew that keeping the music in the mountains--playing in their communities, playing for schools--was part of the job. With that, they set about making crankies, and learning stories, and trading songs and tunes.

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Event Presenter

Director of Research and Instruction Services at Burke Library, Hamilton College

Lisa A. Forrest, Director of Research and Instruction Services at Hamilton College, received her M.L.S. from the University at Buffalo. She is the recipient of the Excellence in Library Service Award from the Western New York Library Resources Council (2008) and a fellow of the Western New York Library Resources Council’s Leadership Institute (2009) and the Educause Leading Change Institute (2014). Lisa's scholarly writing has appeared in a variety of publications, including American Libraries, A Leadership Primer for New Librarians (Neal-Schuman Publishers), Journal of Library Innovation, Thinking Outside the Book (McFarland), Urban Library Journal, Writing and Publishing: The Librarians Handbook (ALA Editions), and Job Stress and the Librarian (McFarland).

Her academic interests include the use of innovative technologies in library instruction, library leadership, and creative marketing and outreach. Lisa's creative writing has been featured in ArtVoice, Buffalo News, Damn the Caesars, eco-poetics, elimae, foursquare, The Great Lakes Review, Hot Metal Bridge, Kadar Koli, WordWrights, and Yellow Edenwald Field. Other honors received include Pushcart nominations, the “Best of Buffalo: Best Poet” award (ArtVoice, 2011), and the National Public Radio News Directors Incorporated (PRINDI) Award for her radio commentary And So This is Christmas. Lisa's first collection of poems, To the Eaves (2008) is available from BlazeVox Books.

Kristin L. Strohmeyer is a Reference and Outreach Librarian at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. Kristin is the departmental liaison for many humanities departments and history, providing instruction and research assistance to those faculty and students. She is also a member of the HILLgroup, and is actively involved in New Faculty and New Student Orientation. She currently serves on the ALA Library Instruction Roundtable Steering Committee, and is past-president of the Eastern New York Chapter of ACRL. Kristin received her B.A. in English Literature and Medieval History from Potsdam College in New York, and her M.S. in Library Science from Simmons College in Boston.